To install a marine outboard engine, or other marine engine, on a watercraft, various lines need to be connected from the watercraft to the outboard engine. This is often referred to as rigging. These lines include, for example, a fuel line connected between the watercraft's fuel pump to the outboard engine's injectors, an electrical wire or cable connected between a battery in the watercraft and an electrical device of the outboard engine, and one or more data transmission cables connected between one or more sensors in the watercraft and an electronic control unit of the outboard engine and/or between one or more gauges on the watercraft and a data transmission device associated with the outboard engine.
In order to connect these lines, the person installing the outboard engine on the watercraft needs to route all of these lines inside the cowling of the outboard engine to the corresponding devices. This can prove to be time consuming, difficult, and can lead to lines being installed improperly. For example, a line could be unintentionally mounted near a part of the engine of the outboard engine which gets hot during operation, possibly resulting in the melting of the line and therefore failure of the device to which it is connected. This also makes maintenance of the outboard engine difficult where the maintenance requires that the outboard engine be removed from the watercraft.
Therefore, there is a need for a system that facilitates the installation of an outboard engine to a watercraft.